V. S. Naipaul Libros

A cultural history describing how folklore studies and the music industry helped to create a musical color line in the South, associating certain genres with particular racial and ethnic identities.

This is a further volume in the ongoing reissue of the backlist of V.S. Naipaul, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001.

The correspondence captures V. S. Naipaul's profound transformation from a disoriented expatriate in England to a distinguished literary figure. Through his letters, readers gain insight into his cultural shift from Trinidad, reflecting his struggles and growth as a writer. This intimate portrayal reveals the complexities of identity and belonging, showcasing Naipaul's journey in navigating his new world while remaining connected to his roots.

A magnet to the poets, philosophers, teachers, troubadours and misfits who people the town of Port of Spain, Miguel Street is a place where tales of glory and debauchery vie with declarations of love and anger, where neighbourhood dramas are scrutinized and wisdom doled out to one and all.

Owning a small portion of the Trinidad earth and a respectable house of his own is the dream that sustains Mohun Biswas through a life of frustration and despair after he marries into the domineering Tulsi family

The history of Trinidad begins with a delusion: the belief that somewhere nearby on the South American mainland lay El Dorado, the mythical kingdom of gold. In this extraordinary and often gripping book, V. S. Naipaul–himself a native of Trinidad–shows how that delusion drew a small island into the vortex of world events, making it the object of Spanish and English colonial designs and a mecca for treasure-seekers, slave-traders, and revolutionaries. Amid massacres and poisonings, plunder and multinational intrigue, two themes emerge: the grinding down of the Aborigines during the long rivalries of the El Dorado quest and, two hundred years later, the man-made horror of slavery. An accumulation of casual, awful detail takes us as close as we can get to day-to-day life in the slave colony, where, in spite of various titles of nobility, only an opportunistic, near-lawless community exists, always fearful of slave suicide or poison, of African sorcery and revolt. Naipaul tells this labyrinthine story with assurance, withering irony, and lively sympathy. The result is historical writing at its highest level.

In this account of his journeys through Asia, the believers are the Muslims Naipaul met on these jouneys. He shows young people battling to regain the original purity of their faith, and offers an insight into modern Islam and the comforting simplifications of religious fanaticism.